The Gravedigger's Daughter

by Joyce Carol Oates

  Of course, Jacob had bought the radio without telling Anna. He no longer troubled to tell his wife much of what he did. Obscurely, they had become resentful of each other. Their stony silences lasted for hours. A day, a night. Who had wounded whom? When had it begun? Like dumb blind undersea creatures they lived together in their shadowy cave with only a minimal awareness of each other. Jacob learned to make his wishes known by grunting, pointing, grimacing, shrugging, shifting his body abruptly in his chair, glancing toward Anna. She was his wife, his servant. She must obey. He controlled all their finances, all transactions with the outside world were his. Since he’d forbidden the intimidated woman to speak their native language even when they were alone together in their bedroom, even in their bed in the dark, Anna was at a disadvantage, and came to resent having to speak English at any time.

  Anna, too, was profoundly shocked by her husband’s impulsive purchase of the radio, which she interpreted as an act not only of uncharacteristic profligacy but also of marital infidelity. He is mad. This is the beginning. When they had so little money, and the children needed clothes, and visits to the dentist. And the price of coal, and the prices of food…Anna was shocked, and frightened, and could not speak of it without stammering.

  Jacob interrupted, “The radio is secondhand, Anna. A bargain. And a Motorola.”

  He was jeering at her, she knew. For Anna Schwart had no idea what Motorola was, or meant; no more than she could have recited the names of the moons of Jupiter.

  That first evening, Jacob was giddy, magnanimous: he invited his family into the parlor to listen to the big box-like object installed beside his chair. Anna stayed away, but the boys and Rebecca were enthralled. But it was an error in judgment, Jacob came to realize, for the news that evening was of an attack in the North Sea, the British destroyer Glowworm sunk by German warships, but survivors of the attack had been rescued from drowning by the crew of one of the German ships…Immediately Jacob changed his mind about his children listening to the radio, and ordered them out of the parlor.

  German warships! Rescuing British sailors! What did it mean…

  “No. It is not predictable. There is ugliness in it. It is not for young ears.”

  It was the news, he meant. Unpredictable, and therefore ugly.

  Nineteen years later, hearing the radio in Niley’s room murmuring and humming through the night, Rebecca would recall her father’s radio that came to be such a fixture in the household. Like a malevolent god it was, demanding attention, exerting an irresistible influence, yet unapproachable, unknowable. For as no one but Pa ever dared to sit in Pa’s chair (a finely cracked old leather chair with a hassock and a solid, almost straight back, because of Pa’s aching spine) so no one but Pa was to switch on, or even to touch, the radio.

  “You hear? No one.”

  He was serious. His voice quavered.

  Mostly it was Herschel and August he warned. Anna, he understood would scorn to touch the radio. Rebecca he knew would never disobey.

  Pa was jealous of the damn thing like it was (this was Herschel’s sniggering observation) some lady friend of his. You had to wonder what the old man was doin with it, some nights, huh?

  During the day, when Pa was working in the cemetery, the radio was unprotected in the parlor. More than once Pa suddenly appeared in the house, stalking into the parlor to check the tubes at the rear of the radio: if they were hot, or even lukewarm, there would be hell to pay for somebody, usually Herschel.

  The reason for such frugality was electricity doesn’t grow on trees.

  And as Pa said repeatedly, grimly war news isn’t for the ears of the young.

  Behind the old man’s back Herschel sputtered indignantly, “Fuck ‘war newzz.’ Fuck like there ain’t other things on a radyo, like muzik an’ jokin, it wouldna kill the old bastid to let us lissen.” Herschel was old enough to know what a radio was, he had friends in town whose families owned radios, and everybody listened to them all the time, and not just fuckin’ war newzz!

  Yet, night after night, Pa shut the parlor door against them.

  The more Pa drank at supper, the more firmly he shut the door against them.

  Some nights, the yearning to hear the radio was so powerful, both Rebecca’s brothers whined through the door.

  “C’n we lissen too, Pa?”

  “We won’t talk or nothin…”

  “Yeah! We won’t.”

  Herschel was daring enough to rap his scraped knuckles against the door, though not too loudly. He was growing so fast his wrists protruded from his shirtsleeves, and his collar was too tight to button over his Adam’s apple. Soon, the lower half of his face would sprout wire-like hairs he would be obliged to shave off before coming to school, or be sent back home by his teacher.

  Through the door they (Herschel, August, Rebecca) could hear a radio voice that rose and fell like waves, but they could not distinguish any words, for Pa kept the volume turned low. What was the voice saying? Why was “news” so important? Rebecca was too young to know what war was (“Fightin’ like with guns, bombs, an there’s airplanes, too,” Herschel said) but Ma told her it was all happening far away in Europe: thousands of miles away. Herschel and August spoke knowingly of “Nazizz”�“Hittler”�but said they were far away, too. No one wanted the war to come to the Yoo Ess. Anyway there was the ’Lantic Ozean in-between. The war would never come to a place like Milburn with a single lock on the barge canal. “This place,” Herschel said scornfully, “the fuckin Nazizz wouldna bother with.”

  Rebecca’s mother scorned the radio as what she called a toy-thing of her father’s they could not afford, yet he had bought it. He had bought it! She would never forgive him.

  Month followed month in that year 1940. And in 1941. What was happening in the war-news? Pa said it was ugly, and getting uglier all the time. But the Yoo Ess was staying out of it like damn cowwards not wanting to get hurt. You’d think, if they didn’t give a damn about Poland, France, Belgium, Russia, they’d give a damn about Britain…

  Ma was nervous, and began to hum loudly. Sometimes she would hiss in her hoarse, cracked voice, “‘War news isn’t for the ears of the young.’”

  Rebecca was confused: Pa wanted the war to come here? Was that what Pa wanted?

  There were nights when, in the midst of eating supper, Pa became distracted so you knew he was thinking of the war-news in the next room. That sick-eager look in his eyes. Gradually he would cease eating and push his plate away and take swallows of his drink instead, like medicine. Sometimes his drink was beer, sometimes hard cider (purchased from the Milburn cider mill a mile away on the river, that smelled so strong when the wind blew from that direction), and sometimes whiskey. Pa’s stomach was eat out by rats he liked to say. On that damn boat from Mar-say. Lost his guts and lost his youth Pa said. This was meant to be a joke, Rebecca knew. But it seemed so sad to her! Unconsciously Pa would drift his eyes on her, not seeing her exactly but the little one, the unwanted one; the baby born after eleven hours of her mother’s labor in a filthy cabin in a filthy, docked boat in New York harbor from which the other passengers had fled. She was too young to know such a thing, yet she knew. When Pa uttered one of his jokes he laughed his snigger-laugh. Herschel would echo this laugh and, less certainly, August. But never Ma. Rebecca would not recall her mother laughing at any joke or witticism of her father’s, ever.

  The worst was when Pa came into the house in a bad mood, limping and cursing, too tired to wash up after working ten, twelve hours in the cemetery and not even the promise of the war-news could liven him. At supper he chewed his food as if it pained him, or was making him ill. More and more he would drink the liquid in his glass. With a fork he pushed fatty chunks of meat off his plate onto the oilcloth covering and finally he would shove away his plate with a sigh of disgust. “Huh! Somebody must think this is a family of hogs, feeding us such swill.”

  At the supper table, Rebecca’s mother stiffened. Her flushed, soft-sliding girl’s face that wa
s pinched inside her other, older and tireder face showed no sign of hurt, nor even of hearing what Pa had said. The boys would laugh, but not Rebecca who felt the stab of pain in her mother’s heart as if it was her own.

  Pa grunted he’d had enough. Shoved his chair back from the table, grabbed his bottle to take into the parlor with him, shut the door hard against his family. In his wake, there was an awkward embarrassed silence. Even Herschel, his ears reddening, stared down at his plate and gnawed his lower lip. In the parlor, you could hear a stranger’s voice: muffled, teasing-taunting. Ma rose quickly from the table and began to hum and would continue to hum, fierce as a swarm of bees, crashing pans and cutlery in the sink as she washed the dishes in water heated from the stove. Every night, now that she was a big girl and no longer a toddler, Rebecca helped Ma by drying. These were happy times for Rebecca. Without Ma giving a sign of noticing, still less of being annoyed, Rebecca could draw close against Ma’s legs, that exuded such warmth. Through her almost-shut eyes she might glance up, to see Ma peeking down at her. Was it a game? The game of Not-See, but with her mother?

  Supper was over abruptly. The boys had gone out. Pa was gone into the parlor. Only Rebecca and Ma remained in the kitchen, doing dishes. From time to time Ma muttered under her breath words in that strange sibilant language the farmer’s wife had spoken at their front door, passing too swiftly for Rebecca to grasp, that she knew she was not meant to hear.

  When the last dish was dried and put away, Ma said, not smiling at Rebecca, speaking in a sudden sharp voice like a woman waking from sleep, “You were wanted, Rebecca. God wanted you. And I wanted you. Never believe what that man says.”

  14

  Never say it.

  And there would be other things never-to-be-said. That, in time, vanished into oblivion.

  Marea was one of these.

  Marea�a sound like music, mysterious.

  When Rebecca was five years old, in the summer of 1941.

  Later, the memory of Marea would be obliterated by her father’s emotion at the time of “Pearl Harbor.”

  Marea�“Pearl Harbor”�“World War Too” (for so it sounded to Rebecca’s ears). In that time when Rebecca was still a little girl too young to go to school.

  One evening after supper instead of going into the parlor, Pa remained in the kitchen. He and Ma had a surprise for them.

  Of Herschel and August it was asked, Would you like a brother?

  Of Rebecca it was asked, Would you like two sisters?

  Pa was the one to speak so, mysteriously. But there was Ma beside him, very nervous. Giddy and girlish and her eyes shining.

  As the children stared, Pa removed from an envelope photographs to be spread carefully on the oilcloth cover of the kitchen table. It was a warm June evening, the cemetery was alive with the sounds of nocturnal insects and there were two or three small moths inside the kitchen, throwing themselves against the bare lightbulb overhead. In his excitement Pa nudged the dangling lightbulb with his head so that the halo of light swung, veered drunkenly across the table; it was Ma who reached out to steady the bulb.

  Their cousins. From the town of Kaufbeuren in Germany across the ocean.

  And these: their uncle Leon, and their aunt Dora who was their mother’s younger sister.

  The boys stared. Rebecca stared. Your cousins. Your uncle, aunt. Never had they heard such words before from their father’s mouth.

  “Herschel will remember them, yes? Uncle Leon, Aunt Dora. El-zbieta, your little cousin, maybe you do not. She was just a baby then.”

  Herschel crouched over the table to frown at the strangers in the photographs, who squinted up at him in miniature beside Pa’s splayed thumb. He was breathing hoarsely through his nose. “Why’d I remember ’em?”

  “Because you saw them, Herschel. As a child in Munich.”

  “‘Mew-nik’”?�what the hell’s that?”

  Pa spoke hurriedly, as if the words pained him. “Where we lived. Where you were born. In that other place before this one.”

  “Nah,” Herschel said, shaking his head now so vehemently the flesh of his mouth quivered, “I wadna. Not me.”

  Their mother touched Pa’s arm. Saying quietly, “Maybe Herschel does not remember, he was so young. And so much since…”

  Pa said bluntly, “He remembers.”

  “Fuck I don’t! I was born in the fuckin Yoo Ess.”

  Ma said, “Herschel.”

  Now was a dangerous time. Pa’s hands were shaking. He pushed one of the photographs toward Herschel, to look at. Rebecca saw that the photographs were bent and wrinkled as if they were old, or had come a long distance. When Herschel picked up the photograph to hold to the light, squinting as he peered at the couple, Rebecca worried that he might tear the photograph in two; it was like her older brother to do sudden wild things.

  Instead, Herschel grunted and shrugged. Maybe yes, maybe no.

  This placated Pa who snatched the photograph back from Herschel and smoothed it out on the table as if it were something precious.

  There were five photographs, and each was wrinkled, and somewhat faded. Ma was saying to Rebecca, “Your new sisters, Rebecca? See?”

  Rebecca asked what were their names.

  Ma spoke the names of the children in the photograph as if they were very special names: “Elzbieta, Freyda, Joel.”

  Rebecca repeated in her earnest child-voice: “Elz-bee-ta. Frey-da. Jo-el.”

  Elzbieta was the oldest, Ma said. Twelve or thirteen. Freyda, she was the youngest, Rebecca’s age. And Joel was somewhere between.

  Rebecca had seen pictures of people in newspapers and magazines but she had never seen photographs, that you could hold in your hand. The Schwarts did not own a camera, for such was a luxury and they could not afford luxuries as Pa said. Strange it seemed to Rebecca, and wonderful, that a picture could be of someone you knew, whose name was known to you. And of children! A little girl Rebecca’s age!

  Ma said these were her little nieces and nephew. Her sister Dora’s children.

  So strange to hear Anna Schwart speak of nieces, nephews. Sister!

  These attractive strangers were not Schwarts but Morgensterns. The name “Morgenstern” was utterly new, and melodic.

  In the photographs the Morgenstern children were smiling uncertainly. Almost you might think they were looking at you, because you could look so closely at them. Elzbieta was frowning as she smiled. Or maybe she was not smiling at all. Nor Joel, who squinted as if a light was shining in his eyes. The smallest, Freyda, was the most beautiful child, though you could not see her face clearly for she stood with her head bowed. Shyly she smiled as if to beg Don’t look at me please!

  In that instant Rebecca saw that Freyda was her sister.

  In that instant Rebecca saw that Freyda had the same dark, shadowed eyes that she had. And except that Freyda had fluffy bangs brushed down on her forehead, and Rebecca’s forehead was bare, their braided hair was the same. In one picture, Rebecca’s favorite for you could see Freyda the clearest, the little girl appeared to be tugging at her braid over her left shoulder in the way that Rebecca sometimes did with hers when she was nervous.

  “‘Frey-da.’ She can sleep in my bed.”

  “That’s right, Rebecca,” Ma said, squeezing her arm in approval, “she can sleep in your bed.”

  Pa was saying that the Morgensterns would be “making the crossing” along with nine hundred other passengers on a ship called the Marea, in mid-July, sailing from Lisbon, Portugal, to New York City. They would be journeying then upstate to Milburn, to stay with the Schwarts until they were “settled” in this country.

  Rebecca was excited to hear this: her cousins would be crossing the ocean, that Rebecca’s family had crossed before she was born? A strange little story came to her the way such stories often did, like dreams, swift as an eyeblink and vanished before she knew it: that another baby girl would be born, then. The way Rebecca had been born. And so when the Morgensterns came to live with
them�would there be a new baby?

  It would seem to Rebecca that, yes there would be a new baby in the house. But she knew not to mention this to anyone, not even Ma, for she was beginning to understand that some things she believed to be true were only dreams inside her head.

  Herschel said sullenly there wouldn’t be enough room for them all if these new people came, Chrissake would there? “Bad enough livin like hogs.”

  Quickly Gus said his cousin Joel could sleep with him in his bed.

  And quickly Ma said yes there would be room!

  Pa seemed not so certain as Ma, more worried, stoop-shouldered and rubbing his knuckles against his eyes in that way he had, that made him look so tired, and old-seeming, saying yes the house was small, but he and his brother-in-law could enlarge it, maybe. Convert the woodshed into an extra room. Leon was a carpenter, they could work together. Before the Morgensterns arrived, he and the boys could start. Clear out the trash and level the dirt floor and lay down planks for floorboards. Get some tar paper sheets, for insulation.

  “Tar paper!” Herschel snorted. “Like from the dump, huh?”

  A mile away on the Quarry Road was the Milburn township dump. Herschel and Gus often explored there, as did other neighborhood children. Sometimes they dragged things home, useful items like castoff rugs, chairs, lamp shades. It was believed that Jacob Schwart, too, explored the dump, though never at any hour when he might be observed.

  The dump was one of the places Rebecca was forbidden to go, ever. Not with her brothers and especially not alone.

  Ma was saying in her quick warm voice she could fix all the rooms nicer. She had never gotten around to doing all she’d meant to do, she’d been so tired when they first moved in. Now she could put up curtains. She would sew curtains herself. Ma was speaking in a way that made her children uneasy for they had not heard her speak like this before. Ma was smiling a bright nervous smile showing the crack between her teeth, and Ma was brushing at her hair with both hands as if the moths had gotten into it.